John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight' - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxUAntt1z2c <comment><USER2> I'm not aware of any other show that so seamlessly combines rip-roaringly funny comedy with essential insight into the way our society and system of government is deeply flawed. And on top of that, he even manages to direct action to fix the issues he draws attention to -- taking down the FCC website being one example[1].

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/03/john- oliv...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/03/john-oliver-fcc- website-net-neutrality)

<comment><USER3> It's a good show (he's funny and you learn stuff) but it's way too preachy. He gets just a little too excited about things that are basically impossible for anyone to get excited about. Clearly pandering to the young, left crowd. I'm sure it makes some people feel very warm at night but it gives me a bad taste in my mouth after binge watching.

<comment><USER4> My main problem with John Oliver is that he often chimes in on subjects he doesn't know anything about with folksy common sense logic that is often wrong. I remember him mocking some system for using tapes for storage on the belief that a technology that is so old cannot possibly be useful in modern technologies. In his latest clip, he mocks information being passed by Excel. How does he think things happen? Some magical global technological system with perfect information and transparency? Perhaps he should try to build such a system.

By critiquing a system that he knows nothing about makes the criticism ring hollow.

<comment><USER5> At the end of the day it's a comedy show not a news show and his job is to make people laugh. You can't make people laugh with jokes about insider domain knowledge only possessed by experts.

If you consider the constraint that Last Week Tonight is primarily a comedy show themed around important newsworthy issues rather than an investigative journalism show it's hard to imagine it done any better.

<comment><USER6> > At the end of the day it's a comedy show not a news show and his job is to > make people laugh

He and Jon Stewart keep (kept in the case of Jon) using this excuse when they get things wrong, but when they get things right they take all the glory they can get. The show(s) have to have some sort of accountability.

For example Couric was just ripped for adding 6 seconds of dead air on a documentary....but that's literally what The Daily Show had been doing for years, making people look like idiots (so it fits their segment narrative). That's all good fun until you realize young people think people like Stewart and Oliver are trustworthy news sources.

I like what they do in many cases, but I despise this excuse that it's "just" a comedy show. Maybe NBC nightly news should just add an in-studio audience that laughs and suddenly they can get away with every screw up.

<comment><USER5> Can you give a specific example of someone who was manipulated to make look bad on the Daily Show? Most of their interviews are with people the host disagrees with but are happy to share their views (gun rights advocates, abortion rights advocates, etc). Typically guests and participants in segments are not being manipulated. I can't say it's never been done but it's certainly not an epidemic at that show.

<comment><USER6> You're joking right? The entire interview segments are spliced and edited. Pauses are added for comedic effect, they splice different questions with different answers. It's not a single example, it's literally every interview segment.

That doesn't mean I agree with the person they are interviewing, or that that person isn't ignorant...but there is no way you can see their reporting as objective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Georestricted:

        The uploader has not made this
        video available in your country

Someone else provided a different link:

[https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=912968418832168&id...](https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=912968418832168&id=479042895558058)

That returns with:

        Sorry, this page isn't available

        The link you followed may be broken,
        or the page may have been removed.

I look forward to the day we finally realise we are out of the transition period between not having the web at all, and the web working properly, with content makers being properly resourced and rewarded. Good job I'll live forever - if I have a normal lifespan I doubt I'd see it.

<comment><USER8> Julia Reda, MP for the German Pirate Party with Greens/EFA in the European Parliament, has recently launched a campaign to introduce EU laws against geoblocking: [https://juliareda.eu/2016/05/end- geoblocking/](https://juliareda.eu/2016/05/end-geoblocking/)

So there's a little bit of movement, I guess?

<comment><USER9> It's unlikely that a law on geo blocking in the EU will have much effect over US content.

But besides that, it's a great idea that will entrench cable companies for a few more years and delay the transition to streaming by forcing streaming services to compete against every single cable and satellite operator in the EU at the same time (cable/sat firms aren't part of the digital single market, so they can keep carrying on). Is there content that is specifically relevant to Estonians, but for various reasons thorny to license in France? That's going to suck for the Estonians.

One might assume that Netflix (or another one of the streaming services) might grab the broadcast rights to a major sporting event (traditionally the domain of cable/satellite, and the last good reason to keep this around for many consumers) -- this proposal makes sure that day won't happen until they can grab the rights for the entire EU zone, which is obviously hugely expensive. It's not hard to imagine that it might make more sense (and be a lot easier) to grab the rights in a single, small-ish, well connected market (say Netherland) as a pilot, then leave, say, the UK for a few years later until broadband outside the cities get good enough to support at decent HD stream.

Major sporting events is of course only one such example. Plenty of content will suffer the same fate.

Another victim is license fee supported content. Especially the BBC relies on re-licensing high quality content in other european markets. This income subsidises the UK operation. If forced to not geoblock this content, the BBC will have to chose between foregoing significant licensing income, or to stop streaming altogether.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a non-american guy that has never seen John Oliver before, I found it very hard to sit through the entire thing until the end, though the payoff was definitely worth it.

This guys looks to me like he's been in TV for a little too long and tries very hard to find a audience with very simple jokes (that feel kind of forced) amplified by background laughter.

He has the right idea and did the right thing but I personally would have found it more enjoyable without the jokes.

<comment><USER11> I too find it too hard to watch without cringing. He has a whole team of writers and the best they come up with is some sarcastic comments at someone's expense. Laughing at people is not 'social commentary', its lowest form of dumb comedy with horrible laugh tracks ( i thought we were done with silly laugh tracks ?)

I always thought this was a dying genre but seems like young ppl are into it?

<comment><USER12> Vaudeville never dies; it just changes costumes. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The baffling thing to me is that this is already discharged debt - "out of statute medical debt from Texas", "medical debt they no longer had to pay" \- and how on earth is it legal to try and collect that?

<comment><USER14> It's still debt, it's not as if the money is not owed it's just debt that has no legal repercussions for not paying. From my understanding at least.

So really he saved them from harassing phone calls, not really the money itself.

<comment><USER15> If the debt collectors somehow manage to trick the debtors into acknowledging the debt, the debt clock is reset & it goes back on to your credit report.

<comment><USER16> What constitutes acknowledgement?

<comment><USER17> I think the options are two: bully and harass the debtors until they pay or go to courts and try to get the default judgement.

As the program points out what they buy is name and number. So I suppose if the person involved showed up in court and demanded any sort of confirmation of debt (like original bills perhaps?) then the case would be dismissed. After all the company needs some proof. But they overload the courts and if no one shows up to defend then the default judgement goes in favor of the debt collector.

And then they go and collect with the power of law behind them.

This is crazy but that's how they roll in the land of the free :)

<comment><USER18> The statute of limitations applies to whether the creditor can go to court. Since these debts we're talking about are older than that, getting a judgment is off the table.

That's also why they were sold for a fraction of a penny on the dollar -- the only way you could collect on them is to call the debtors and hassle them. At this point those debtors are probably also wise to the fact that you have no legal power to enforce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's a program called The Rolling Jubilee which has been doing this for a few years. I think the idea is that it encourages people to help pay off the next person's debt, since the amount they were forgiven is much more than it cost to buy it:

[http://rollingjubilee.org/](http://rollingjubilee.org/)

I believe that this is an offshoot of the Occupy movement.

<comment><USER20> "But as of December 31st, 2013, we have stopped accepting new donations." Would love to see someone new come in and start doing the same.

<comment><USER21> The pivot from rollingjubilee.org (which uses donations to buy discounted debt and abolish it) to debtcollective.org (where debtors can register and organize "debt strikes") was explained in a NYT column[1]:

> _Until now, we have worked in the secondary debt market, using crowdfunded > donations to buy portfolios of medical and educational debts for pennies on > the dollar, just as debt collectors do. Only, instead of collecting on them, > we abolish them, operating under the belief that people shouldn't go into > debt for getting sick or going to school. [.....] But this approach has its > limits. Federal loans, for example, are guaranteed by the government, and > debtors can be freed of them — via bankruptcy — only under exceedingly rare > circumstances. That means they aren't sold at steep discounts and remain out > of our reach. What's more, America's mountain of student debt is too immense > for the Jubilee to make a significant dent in it. Real change will require > more organized actions like those taken by the Corinthian 15._

Its not surprising that they lost traction after the pivot. Buying discounted debt is a tactic which respects the logic of the market. Debt strikes go against the cultural norm of treating debt as a moral obligation.

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/opinion/a-strike- against-s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/opinion/a-strike-against- student-debt.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If debt is trading at pennies on the dollar, and I owe someone 5k, what's stopping me from borrowing 50 or 100 bucks from a friend (if I dont have it) and buying back my debt? Do you need to buy in bulk?

Here's an idea - aggregate debt at pennies on the dollar and sell it back to the debtor at twice the amount it'll still be pennies on the dollar and you'll make a nice profit.

<comment><USER23> >Here's an idea - aggregate debt at pennies on the dollar and sell it back to the debtor at twice the amount it'll still be pennies on the dollar and you'll make a nice profit.

That's essentially what a lot of debt collectors will accept. If you have debt in collection, sometimes you can offer them a lump sum instead of the whole amount and they'll take it because they're looking to simply profit.

At that point it's likely your credit is already ruined though... which is a whole different topic to broach.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "At that point it's likely your credit is already ruined though... which is a whole different topic to broach."

In the UK at least getting passed to a debt collector should have no impact on your credit score. It's when they decide to go further and recoup it through court that you start to get hurt. This is my experience at least. It makes sense as I know many people who have been passed to debt collectors for debts they didn't owe so it would be a mess if that effected their credit.

<comment><USER24> It doesn't matter in the US either. What matters here is days late. Anything over 30 days gets noted under the credit line, and will stick around there for a couple years or so. Unsure what happens to the mark once the debt is settled.

<comment><USER23> After it's passed to collections you can't do much, it's too late. A "couple years" is 7 years. The US credit industry is absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> You could probably use debt forgiveness as a collection technique: If the person doesn't agree to start paying it back, you threaten to forgive the entire amount all at once in a way that is not tax-advantageous. Now you owe taxes on your $80k of extra income(forgiven debt), and the government is less lenient than banks when they're collecting tax debt.

They might eventually be able to get it discharged, but it'd require them to declare bankruptcy.

I don't know: It might be too subtle to scare people with. The kinds of people who could easily understand this tactic in a one-page letter are probably not the kinds of people in debt.

<comment><USER26> How exactly is forgiven debt considered income?

<comment><USER25> As creditor, you file a form 1099-C with the IRS:

[https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1099c.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- pdf/f1099c.pdf)

The borrower also gets a copy, and the IRS will know to look for it when the borrower files his taxes.

<comment><USER13> Just to add a bit of context around that PDF - "Topic 431 - Canceled Debt – Is It Taxable or Not?"

[https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc431.html](https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc431.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The title of this post focuses on one aspect of the episode in a way that has badly skewed our discussion.

The point of the episode is not John Oliver's Oprah stunt, but rather how the debt collection industry works.

[The original title is/was: "John Oliver buys $15M in debt and forgives all of it on 'Last Week Tonight'"]

</comment><comment><USER28> As has been mentioned elsewhere, it seems the real 'value' of this debt to people buying it, is not the debt itself because it can't legally be enforced, but the personal information that goes along with it.

<comment><USER29> At the price they paid, it's around $6.66 per person. They'd have paid a lot less for a lot more debt if they hadn't bought medical debt. And that's not even resorting to illegal means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why there is no non-profit here that gets donations and spent them to wipe out medical and general debt that is the cheapest available on the market right now? Or are there ?

<comment><USER31> There are some. Like [http://rollingjubilee.org/](http://rollingjubilee.org/)

<comment><USER32> The tactic seems questionable. I'd rather give money to people who provide legal assistance to folks getting hassled by debt collectors, and spread information about people's rights under the FDCPA and other laws.

The reason for that being, buying up bad paper raises the value of it, whereas letting people know their rights lowers the value of it. If bad paper was worth less, debt originators would have stronger incentives to work something out with their insolvent customers rather than sell to shady debt collectors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wont the debtors have to report the forgiven debt as income on their taxes, potenially triggering a very difficult tax situation?

<comment><USER34> Site is here: [https://www.ripmedicaldebt.org/](https://www.ripmedicaldebt.org/)

Actually it's pretty simple. They figure out who needs the debt relief. They then go buy the debt for pennies on the dollar from one of the companies that has it. Then they forget about it. (I'd say they just delete the Excel file it's in, but there is lots of negative karma going on above this post about how wonderful Excel is)

From their website "Through sophisticated data analytics, RIP analyzes its medical debt portfolios to pinpoint those who are most in need of relief and then negotiates to purchase this debt for a significantly reduced amount – rates typically made available only to large organizations in the debt buying industry.

Once this debt is purchased – debtors are unburdened of this unpaid item."

So Oliver just gave them $14+ million in debt that he paid pennies on the dollar for and the are going to ignore it. Remember it's been written off (as a tax benefit) already, so it's only the debt people that care about it. Last guy that cared got paid by Oliver, so he's good to go.

<comment><USER35> Hmm, that's the right site but right now all you get is the WP install walkthrough....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I was a little disappointed in how this story developed; it started with a family being destroyed by medical debt, and I thought it was going to develop into a discussion of medical debt, which accounts for 60% of bankruptcies in the U.S.[1]. Instead, it just talked about the buying and selling of debt, which is a legitimate business (often unregulated and operated by scum.) I'm not sure what he was calling for, here. That companies be required to hold on to their own debt?

I'm happy about the debt he forgave, though. An organization called Rolling Jubilee[2] does it without a tv show - you can buy someone's debt, too. I didn't notice a shout out; did I just miss it?

edit: learned from the comment above me that they've stopped doing it, and are now The Debt Collective[3], an advocacy organization.

[1] [https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/managing-medical- bill...](https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/managing-medical- bills/nerdwallet-health-study-estimates-56-million-americans-65-struggle- medical-bills-2013/)

[2] [http://rollingjubilee.org/](http://rollingjubilee.org/)

[3] [http://blog.debtcollective.org/](http://blog.debtcollective.org/)

<comment><USER37> > legitimate business (often unregulated and operated by scum.)

That's comedy gold. Wish John used that line.

> I'm not sure what he was calling for, here. That companies be required to > hold on to their own debt?

I think he's calling for regulation. At least some mechanisms to ensure that the debt is factual. Maybe some mechanisms that would ensure people can't collect the debt that they can't legally enforce. Maybe some mechanisms that would prevent accepting debt by default when someone doesn't show up to court. All these things lead to much abuse. Basically something that would address the problems he highlighted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm obviously wrong about this, but I'm surprised there isn't a greater arbitrage opportunity in this -- if one could average out just $10 in collection on average, you'd make a sizable profit on the debt he bought... I wonder if you were to just call and tell these people you bought these debts, and if they'd like to make a donation to help you keep doing this work in the future, I'm curious if it could be self-sustaining...

<comment><USER39> The cost of collecting that $10 may turn out to be more than $10....

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> In a former life I was a developer for a collections agency. I can confirm that we got data from financial institutions in a variety of formats. Most of the time they were PGP encrypted, sometimes as low as 56 bit IIRC. This was in 2007 so I have slept since then.

</comment><comment><USER41> Note that this didn't actually cost them $15M, they bought the debt for $60K.

<comment><USER42> Umm isn't that sort of the whole point.

<comment><USER41> It's not at all obvious how much they actually paid, and comparing it to Oprah's $8M car giveaway is certainly dramatic but pretty disingenuous. It's unlikely the debtors would have ever ended up repaying anything close to $15M (in fact, presumably closer to $60K)

<comment><USER43> He stated exactly how much they paid for that $15m debt in the video and even how they wrote off most of the cost of the taxes they would have had to pay it in the video.

<comment><USER41> Of course, that's where I got the $60k figure from, but that one sentence could easily have been missed by anyone dazzled by the big number in the headline and comparison to Oprah's giveaway, assuming they even watched the whole 20 minute video in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> At the 17:06 mark is when he drops the surprise news about buying up the debt.

</comment><comment><USER45> Aren't there tax implications for forgiving the debt?

<comment><USER13> Maybe.

"Topic 431 - Canceled Debt – Is It Taxable or Not?" [https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc431.html](https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc431.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> There was a terrific story about this in the NYT a while back [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182953)

"This is one of the most unbelievable articles I've ever read. If you didn't read it all the way through, do so over lunch or something; it's amazing."

</comment><comment><USER47> Can the debt John forgave be resurrected by another debt collection agency?

The video mentioned several scenarios where debt that's seemingly past it collection date or expired is still desired by these collection companies.

Or is forgiving the debt officially the only way of forever getting rid of it without fear of it coming back from the dead.

</comment><comment><USER48> Wasn't there a similar initiative in the aftermath of the recent financial crisis? With the difference that private people could help out indebted individuals on a smaller scale with some proxy gross debt buyer?

</comment><comment><USER49> Time to start a benevolent/not-for-profit dept collection company that buys dept and then requests their clients in dept repay 0.5% of the original amount they owed just to cover the costs.

</comment><comment><USER50> I have a question:

Isn't the real reason that these debt-buying companies(and the evils that come with it) exist because of bad-lending and in this case, an overpriced, inefficient health-care system?

</comment><comment><USER51> Georestricted in Australia.. Anyone have a summary?

<comment><USER52> You can see it on Facebook:

[https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=912968418832168&id...](https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=912968418832168&id=479042895558058)

<comment><USER53> also in australia:

"Sorry, this page isn't available The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed."

<comment><USER52> Sorry, was on my phone. This works:

[https://www.facebook.com/LastWeekTonight/videos/912968418832...](https://www.facebook.com/LastWeekTonight/videos/912968418832168/)

<comment><USER53> that one works, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Anyone want to start a Kickstarter/Indiegogo to do something similar?

(Eg, raise money and use it to buy debt and do nothing with it)

I'd back it :-)

</comment><comment><USER55> If a company writes off a debt, then haven't tax payers already paid the debt?

</comment><comment><USER56> Serious question: Does that count as a 15 million dollar tax write off?

</comment><comment><USER57> Make Donald Drumpf again!

</comment><comment><USER58> Spoiler in the title.

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't get how an insurance won't cover something. Isn't that the point of Obama forcing you to buy insurance these days?

<comment><USER60> Yes you are supposed to buy insurance (though many just take the penalty). Many Obamacare plans are pretty crappy with low max pay outs. It drives me crazy when people don't read the plans they are buying. My plan has a huge deductible (10k) but no max pay out. So basically I pay 100% for everything but if I ever need some serious hospital time I'd only be out 10k. (And it's very expensive).

<comment><USER61> I'm really going to miss the NHS when the tories have finished dismantling it. :(

<comment><USER62> NHS and ACA really have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

The NHS has serious problems related to accountability, the typical problem with huge multi-level government bureaucracies. Honestly, the NHS has similar problems to the American public education system, for mostly the same reasons.

The ACA has the serious problem that it was explicitly sold as a way to contain costs both at an individual and aggregate level. That has pretty much been exposed as a lie.

The ACA has been good for the narrow band of people who were included in the expanded medicaid coverage, but it's not too hard to imagine a separate (and much simpler) bill that accomplished that part of the bill, without the massive rework of healthcare for the middle class.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hong Kong's Police Violence Is Stamped 'Made in U.K.' - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/18/hong-kongs-police-violence-is-stamped-made-in-u-k/ <comment><USER2> I like the grammar.

> June 12 saw HKPF officers use rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, and pepper > spray on peaceful protesters and riot police beating unarmed demonstrators > senseless, on the orders of Dover and others, and in the most infamous > incident of all, Shave ordered a tear gas round to be fired at an unarmed > approaching legislator. All three were later by Shadow Foreign Affairs > Minister Helen Goodman for their callous actions.</comment>


CyberCode Online – a game designed to look like VScode - <AUTHOR> https://cybercodeonline.com/ <comment><USER2> this is wild</comment>


DNA Sheds Light On Settlement of Pacific - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43265137 <comment><USER2> Interesting. Would be great to see what DNA can teach us about migrations within africa, out of africa, in asia and even americas ( though this might be difficult considering the genocide of the natives ).

This information could be a tremendous help in the study of history especially for regions and times where written history isn't readily available. It can provide some history to "pre-history". Where our ancestors came from, where they went and even perhaps why.</comment>


The Absurd Primacy of the Car in American Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/absurd-primacy-of-the-car-in-american-life/476346/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> More US cities should try at least creating _some_ car-free zones.

It's crazy how in a city of New York's caliber, with great public transport, so much space is taken up by cars for so little gain. The total lack of "walking streets" (streets entirely for pedestrian use for Americans unfamiliar with the concept!) is baffling to me. I think it would be perfectly fine to for example close something like Broadway or even 5th Avenue to cars, the businesses on these streets derive almost no traffic since it's all pass- through. Can you imagine how much better that would be for almost everyone, businesses included, what a destination that would create with a whole avenue packed with people? Close of the streets around squares, instead of creating islands in the middle of traffic you'd get street cafes. Just one, pretty please?

<comment><USER3> I'm currently finishing reading Robert Caro's "The Power Broker", which is about the man who is mostly responsible for New York's choice to embrace the automobile over people, Robert Moses. In short, this choice was extremely conscious and in large part driven by racial and class based segregation.

<comment><USER4> Excellent book. I highly recommend this, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree with the author, and am cognizant of the problem and outraged for the same inefficiencies, deleterious health effects, and fatalities he outlines. But I wish he could have spent an equal amount of time exploring how we solve this problem rather than just inciting futile anger over it.

One solution is telecommuting; get people of the road by having them work from home. Another is mandating fuel efficiency and reducing the pollution cars produce. It's outrageous that children getting leukemia and respiratory illnesses are considered acceptable loses so that people can drive enormous SUVs purely as status symbols instead of for their utility. You want to drive a vehicle that gets less than 20 MPG? Fine, you're also going to pay a gasoline consumption tax to support the social programs that take care of the families your pollution is giving cancer.

Most importantly to me, and the point the author leaves out, is that cars are highly subsidized. The irony of American car ownership is that we consider public transportation socialist, while spending trillions of tax dollars on public roads. I would love to take the train to work, where I can read a book, write, or program instead of sitting in traffic for an hour... but for some reason we consider sitting in traffic for an hour on a publicly-funded road "freedom."

<comment><USER6> IMO, if you wanted to change things, you'd have to penalize driving by eliminating subsidies and/or introduce taxes on non-commercial vehicles and fuel. Then pair that with policies that discourage urban sprawl and encourage investment in public transportation.

We know this can work because the run up on crude caused miles driven to decline.

But that requires some serious political will, and that ain't gonna happen.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that it's too late. Urban sprawl already grew so much that it's out of hand, it looks next to impossible to make a public transportation network that would rival the ones we have on our side of the pond. It's not just lack of political (and voter) will, it's simply the sheer impracticality of implementing it.

<comment><USER8> Then why are there discussions on gentrification. There are reasons why individuals are moving back into the city, especially the up and coming class of individuals. The new comers to the city are fighting urban sprawl by making the move.

<comment><USER7> It's a small minority. Even more interesting, while gentrification is arguably the solution/balancing phenomena to this problem, it's generally speaking a term with a negative connotation associated with it.

<comment><USER6> Only because most US cities do a piss poor job of providing housing support for the poor. That's a failure of policy, not gentrification itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I no longer drive for a variety of reasons, and here in Florida at least where everyone has, it often seems, 2 cars, and there is very little good public transportation, it's not really very fun.

I get things thrown at me by random drivers at least once a month. I have to be constantly aware of drivers chatting on cells not seeing me and literally hitting me head on at intersections.

Trying to date, at my age, with no car is almost impossible.

Pretty much the only other people I see riding bikes are the homeless. And then there is the stigma that if your riding a bike, it means you obviously have DUI and/or other issues.

But I love riding my bike. I've been a constant bike rider since I was 6yo and it has and always will be a source of joy and freedom to me.

Like I enjoy saying "drive a car, burn money and get fat...ride a bike, burn fat and save money."

<comment><USER10> > And then there is the stigma that if your riding a bike, it means you > obviously have DUI and/or other issues.

How deep is this stigma in Florida? I guess that this stigma is regional. I definitely don't feel this stigma living in Western Europe.

<comment><USER11> It's a consistent stigma across most of America

<comment><USER12> That's really gonna depend on where you live. If you live in the affluent suburbs, you're definitely going to encounter that mentality. I was raised in what is possibly the most bicycle friendly town/island in the state of South Carolina and that mentality is still very much a thing. In cities that mentality is less present, but there is the hatred of bicyclists from drivers.

<comment><USER13> > If you live in the affluent suburbs, you're definitely going to encounter > that mentality.

Counterpoint: many affluent suburbs are adding multiuse paths all over the place.

<comment><USER14> The trend around Atlanta is for the affluent to just build further from the city, not to revitalize or rebuild. The middle and upper middle class seem to be the ones doing the revitalization efforts as they try to move back into the cities away from the suburbs. It's leaving this ring suburban homes form the 60s-80s around the perimeter of Atlanta that are falling into disrepair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The comments, here, are almost as fascinating as the article.

The data cited are irrefutable. The points made are perfectly logical.

And yet many of the comments make it seem like the author insulted their mother.

It's that car culture, the almost religious emotional attachment to the automobile, that makes the US so unique. I don't believe there's an equivalent anywhere else. It's really quite fascinating.

<comment><USER15> Individually though we have little choice, fact of the matter is I live 30 miles from where I work. I can't afford to live close enough to walk, they demand I be in the office almost every day. I would love to reduce my dependence on a vehicle, if nothing else to get rid of the risk to my own life I take every morning getting behind the wheel while half awake.

The article fails to point out the US is spread out, people live far apart, and there are few if any viable alternatives for transportation, even in areas with high population density.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, it's a hard problem to solve.

Question though: did you consider alternate forms of transportation when you decided where to live and work? Or did you just (even subconsciously) presume a car was necessarily part of the picture?

That's one of the cultural issues at play, here. For many, not only is single car commuting just assumed, anything else is virtually unthinkable, affecting any number of decisions people make.

<comment><USER16> Unlike many European countries we do not have bus routes to the rural towns. It forces us to rely on our own cars, or a family member's good will. Until we can build the bus infrastructure, cars are here to stay.

<comment><USER6> But why are you in a rural town? That, itself, is a choice based on the assumption you'll be driving.

Edit: not sure why the downvote. That's a genuine question.

Living in a rural area is a lifestyle choice that typically necessitates a car.

If not owning a car is a priority, you'd make a different lifestyle choice.

Which is really my point. For most people, owning a car isn't seen as a lifestyle choice. It's seen as a default. Automatic. Not even part of the equation. And that's cultural.

<comment><USER17> Living in a rural area isn't a lifestyle choice when the cities are so far apart. If the cities were every 40-60 miles, it might be. I live 2 hours from the nearest city that has any significant public transport (central Pennsylvania). Getting rid of a car isn't worth introducing a 2 hour drive to visit family that lives here -- they're why we live here in the first place.

We used to live in southwest Missouri. Losing the car would probably have put us anywhere from 3 to 8 (driving) hours away from anyone we knew, depending on how the public transit is in Kansas City or Tulsa or St. Louis. I wouldn't be surprised if Chicago was the closest city where you could really be fine without a car.

<comment><USER6> _Living in a rural area isn 't a lifestyle choice when the cities are so far apart._

I live in Canada... I live three hours from my own mom. And we live in the two largest cities in my province, separated by vast swathes of cattle pasture and wheat fields.

 _I live 2 hours from the nearest city that has any significant public transport (central Pennsylvania). Getting rid of a car isn 't worth introducing a 2 hour drive to visit family that lives here -- they're why we live here in the first place._

Right.

That's a lifestyle choice.

The choice you're making is choosing to optimize access to family at the expense of requiring a car.

You could choose to live in or nearer to a city, making public transit an option, and renting for those times when you want to visit family. But that would, of course, introduce a barrier to visiting family, and you've decided that's not acceptable.

That's fine! You're obviously free to make that choice!

But don't claim you had no choice, and that it isn't because you've chosen to optimize for a certain lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm engaged to an American and they seem to view a car as a right of passage into adulthood. They feel like the expense of a car, whatever it may be, is essential. If five people go to a restaurant, it's probably in 4+ vehicles.

The craziest thing to me was recently a twenty year old borrowed money to purchase a stick-drive car when she doesn't drive stick and already had a recent, usable car. Why? Now she's going to have no money for years to come!

<comment><USER19> > If five people go to a restaurant, it's probably in 4+ vehicles

That's just crazy! It means five people can't drink. All that's needed is maximum one car for five people, maybe two if traveling from dispersed locations. Keep designated drivers to a minimum.

<comment><USER20> >maybe two if traveling from dispersed locations.

Remember this is America we're talking about. Locations are really, really dispersed. Carpooling 5 people could mean the driver is dropping people off for an hour and a half.

<comment><USER21> Or if the driver drives a pickup truck one could go by bicycle to a point that is along the way that the driver takes and just put the bicycle on the truck bed when meeting. For the other direction it's the same. This should reduce the problem.

<comment><USER22> Drunk bicycling is still a bad idea, and illegal.

<comment><USER23> It is a bad idea, and it is illegal in some countries, but nonetheless if you cycle drunk you're more likely to injure/kill yourself; if you drive drunk you're more likely to injure/kill someone else.

<comment><USER22> I agree that it's better, but it's still a bad idea and shouldn't be presented as any sort of solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The author is missing some crucial facts that a) not everyone lives in a big city with public transport, so they've no alternative; b) even if you live in a big city, it's often much faster or more convenient to take a car; c) without a car you can't get to 99% places outside the city, so say goodbye to weekend road-trips. No, that's not absurd at all - that's the invaluable freedom of movement.

<comment><USER25> Renting a car works well for weekend road-trips.

In small cities it's often feasible to live within walking/biking distance from town center even if the public transport is poorer than big cities.

<comment><USER26> My friends in NYC just book a Zipcar when they need to travel to New Jersey or Long Island. That seems to be a perfect solution (if you've got the money) for people in big cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wouldn't call dependence on cars "absurd" or "insane" as the article puts it. Certainly there's room for improvement. Self-driving cars may reduce underutilization as well as fatalities. Cities could be planned better for walking, biking, and public transportation. But without car transportation I doubt the US economy, standard of living, and general sense of unlimited possibility would be what they are today.

<comment> gm-conspiracy The current state of affairs did not happen by accident.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

<comment><USER8> This is a conspiracy theory. The other part of the story is that if the streetcars were a better investment, General Motors would not have done this. Streetcars are slow, inefficient, and require rail lines to move about. So, if these companies realized the assets they were holding, then they have the opportunity to get rid of them.

If you were an investor, the up and coming item was streetcars, as the article mentions they were better than horse-drawn carriages, so taking a stake in these would have been a good idea. The article mentions that the transit systems are expensive to maintain; as publicly held companies, they need to make money. The current day transit systems with rail lines are heavily underwater and have a difficult time making any money, let alone addressing maintenance issues: BART, Metro, and Max. Knowing the return on investment from existing data, would you as a private investor purchase any of those lines.

So, the conspiracy can be developed in retrospect, but an over arching plot fails to account for some of the opportunities that fit more into an investor trying to make monies.

<comment><USER4> It is not a theory. It is an actual conspiracy.

From the link:

"On April 9, 1947, nine corporations and seven individuals (officers and directors of certain of the corporate defendants) were indicted in the Federal District Court of Southern California on counts of "conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monopoly" and "conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines"[35] which had been made illegal by the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1948, the venue was changed from the Federal District Court of Southern California to the Federal District Court in Northern Illinois following an appeal to the United States Supreme Court (in United States v. National City Lines Inc.)[36] which felt that there was evidence of conspiracy to monopolize the supply of buses and supplies.[37]

In 1949, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, GM and Mack Trucks were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to local transit companies controlled by NCL; they were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the ownership of these companies. The verdicts were upheld on appeal in 1951."

Then you have President Eisenhower appointing the president of GM as the secretary of defense:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Erwin_Wilson#Secretary...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Erwin_Wilson#Secretary_of_Defense)

..and Francis DuPont appointed as chief administrator of highways, whose family, coincidentally owned the largest share of GM stock:

[https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/administrators/fdupont.cfm](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/administrators/fdupont.cfm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "More than 80 cents of every dollar spent on gasoline is squandered by the inherent inefficiencies of the modern internal combustion engine"

actually the inefficiencies are spent on taxes rather than the engine itself.

its really hard to read through the extremely biased article. it literally admits airplanes are more inefficient but cars are worse because they are used more. That's a special kind of logic there.

I myself live in Philly which is one of few places you can exist in america without a car. I also give up a lot of freedom. it means not being able to go hiking in the woods, or pretty much anything outside the maybe 5 or 6 places in america with enough population density to warent a good mass transit system.

cars in many situations also save copius amounts of time. A trip to north east philly is about an hour and a half by mass transit, 25 minutes by car. time savings that would eclipse any theoretical 10 years of life expectancy loss from cars.

cars have done wonder's for economy as well.

<comment><USER22> Gas taxes in the US are around 50 cents/gallon, so at the current national average price of gas of a bit over $2/gallon, that's about a 33% tax.

Airplanes are actually more efficient than cars the way they're used. Cars are usually single-person affairs. The average occupancy is well under two. Passenger airplanes usually fly close to full, and typical fuel efficiency is in the neighborhood of 70-120 seat-miles per gallon.

<comment><USER29> On top of that, airplanes fly in a direct route, whereas cars are stuck following road layouts, which aren't always direct, especially if there's any waterways in the way.

On the flip side, planes usually take off and land at airports that aren't that close to your destination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> _" Annual U.S. highway fatalities outnumber the yearly war dead during each Vietnam, Iraq, the War of 1812, and the American Revolution."_ This kind of nonsense is why all population statistics should be reported per person per year.

1\. Public transportation is a huge vector for viral diseases. 2\. You can drive to a place any time of the day. Public transport doesn't always work 24/7\. 3\. If you live in a shitty neighborhood, you most likely would not want to walk or take a bicycle everywhere. So in some ways cars can make you safer. 4\. Car efficiency and safety is something that is getting improved all the time. 5\. If something bad happens (think hurricane), relying on public transportation will get you stranded with much higher probability.

<comment><USER31> 1\. You won't be getting on a plane then?

2\. You fit your life to the schedule, just as you fit existing journeys around the fact your car can't do 300 mph or drive over water. It isn't worse, just different.

3\. Perhaps the neighbourhood wouldn't be so shitty if everybody wasn't in a car isolated from their surroundings.

4\. Cars have been getting bigger all the time, those efficiency gains have been squandered on SUVs.

5\. Maybe, although basing your transport policy around freak events isn't that sensible.

<comment><USER29> You sound like a European who's never been to the US.

>You won't be getting on a plane then?

Most people don't ride planes very often. If you rely on public transit, you have to use it multiple times per day. People can go months or years before boarding a plane.

>Perhaps the neighbourhood [sic] wouldn't be so shitty if everybody wasn't in a car isolated from their surroundings.

No, the neighborhood is shitty for various other reasons which have nothing to do with cars. America has long had a problem with race relations.

>Maybe, although basing your transport policy around freak events isn't that sensible.

What "freak events"? Hurricanes happen here quite frequently, as do lesser storms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It might as well be called "The Absurd Primacy of Not Living In Cities"

<comment><USER33> Where I live public transport extends well into the countryside.

<comment><USER34> May I ask where you live? The countryside can mean any amount of distance. In many parts of the US the "countryside" between cities could stretch hundreds of miles.

I live outside of Detroit, but I'm originally from Indianapolis. That's ~300 miles, a 4.5 hour drive by car. I drive that stretch about once every other month to visit family, do work functions (I work from home; my company is in Indianapolis) and other things.

As I make this drive, through what is almost exclusively small towns and farms, there's no way public transportation could be made affordable enough to cover the vast distances required so that the reliance of cars in this area would be diminished.

And that's in the Midwest, where the cities aren't that far apart (every major city is 2-5 hours away from the others)! Imagine Texas, where you can drive in a straight line for >10 hours and still be inside that state.

<comment><USER33> _> May I ask where you live?_

In Germany. In Baden-Württemberg to be exact. And by "countryside" I mean 10-30km.

But why on earth would you live hundreds of miles away from where you work? First thing I did when I started going to university in Baden-Württemberg was move there.

As for when I visit my parents or siblings (about 600km away), I take the train.

<comment><USER34> >But why on earth would you live hundreds of miles away from where you work?

I work remotely, but occasionally it's nice to get face time with the team.

I moved for my wife, who got a job (in an industry where there's not a lot of jobs) in the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I hate owning a car. I do not like thinking about repairs, i do not like how much it cost, i do not like how much it pollutes, i do not like how dangerous driving is.

I can't afford to live in a good neighborhood of a city with good public transit either though so I'm damned if I do and also... if I don't

</comment><comment><USER36> The author seems really angry, maybe a good Sunday drive would cheer him up.

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

..and relevant documentary:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-I8GDklsN4)

</comment><comment><USER37> Cars are fine if you use them appropriately. They're great for trips from one city to another (> 10 miles or so) or if you need to carry something really heavy. Otherwise walking, biking, or public transportation are preferable.

If your life is arranged such that all the places you commonly need to go are > 10 miles apart from each other, consider changing that.

</comment><comment><USER38> The whole notion of a car being a "rite of passage" in America has always seemed odd to me, even as an American. In many cases, I have friends with loads of college debt taking on an equal amount of debt for a new car upon graduation.

It seems to me to be a throwback idea that has lived on. I don't think a new car can really be seen as a rite of passage in the current culture of tuition inflation/stagnating wages. It is more like a luxury you are lucky to be able to truly afford (I'm not talking a 72 month payment plan, no down payment afford here) a year or less out of college.

</comment><comment><USER39> In U.S. culture is being shaped by business more than other countries. Car culture, gun culture are two great examples of commercial cultures in U.S.

<comment><USER40> Car culture, as another poster said, is a rite-of-passage in the US.

When you turn 8 years old or so, you typically get your first bicycle. And this lets you exert some independence from your parents - you're able to ride faster than they can run and catch you for the first time. Later, you might get a better bike and be able to ride even faster and further. You can spend an entire day away from home on the weekends, visiting friends that you'd otherwise have to ask mom for a ride to go see.

But the downside to a bicycle is that when it rains, you're probably going to be stuck wherever you are. And then you turn 16 and get your learner's permit. Now you're able to go faster and farther, and travel when it's raining.

So it's part of the process of the little bird leaving the nest and becoming an independent person.

<comment><USER20> >And then you turn 16 and get your learner's permit. Now you're able to go faster and farther,

For many people, that's the first time you can do anything at all. When I was growing up, my bike could get me absolutely nowhere - there wasn't even passable terrain on the side of the highway. You could maybe push and carry a bike for an hour then ride for another 20 minutes to get into town or to where other people lived.

<comment><USER41> The issue is probably just infrastructure.

"Germany builds another new bike highway in the European bike highway grid allowing anyone to bike from any point in the EU to any other point in the EU easily".

"Average age for kids to get a bike goes down even more to below 3"

Infrastructure and culture over here in Europe are very different – you can easily bike to another country and back, without ever having to worry about finding somewhere to bike. You can literally bike or walk _anywhere_.

A lot of that obviously because walking and biking infrastructure in Europe has existed for millenia on these scales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder how things would change if commuting time was considered "working" and employers had to compensate for it at the employee's hourly rate. This probably isn't realistically feasible but...

It seems like most individuals would rather not have horrendous commutes, but they work where the jobs are and they live where housing is cheap and those two things are often far apart. These same individuals have little political pull in terms of zoning laws and urban improvements to make the necessary changes to the infrastructure to allow them to live close to work.

If suddenly, say GE, or any major employer in a town had a financial incentive to lobby the local government to make it easier for employees to live close to where they work, things would probably change a lot faster.

<comment><USER7> Or even just cut the middle-man (the employer). Here in Denmark if you live more than a set distance from your place of work (IIRC it's 20km) you get tax deductions based on the distance of your commute. This way it's the government directly that gets an incentive to make things better because they literally get less tax money and there's no added complexity by involving employers.

<comment><USER37> That probably works well in Denmark, but I think it would be confusing with the morass of federal/state/local governments in the US.

A deduction on your Federal taxes wouldn't necessarily affect the tax money collected by the local or state government, which is usually the one responsible for building various roads. State and local governments may or may not even collect income taxes (some do, some don't).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> One advantage of having a car that I don't see mentioned in the comments is safety. There are a lot of places where I don't feel safe taking public transportations at night. Besides, bikes are more likely to get stolen or vandalized.

<comment><USER43> I also am assuming most of the no-car commenters in the US have no spouse or small children. There's a lot more to life than commuting back and forth to the office.

<comment><USER44> I have a foot in both camps -- I have a wife and small children, and we own a car, but I use bicycle and public transit to get to work. There's really no safe way to get the kids to preschool without a car. I had to do this last week, due to some car issues. The cars whooshing by my tiny children as we walked to the bus stop on the narrow shoulder were utterly terrifying. I won't be doing that again soon.

There were no economical alternatives to our current housing situation, so like many other commenters, we have to use a personal vehicle even though we'd prefer to avoid it.

<comment><USER42> Quite often, I see people carrying very young kids on their bike, either on a back seat, or in a special carriage. We have bike lanes pretty much everywhere in my city, but they are not always separated from the car roads. I don't know if I would take such a risk myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The best thing we can do now without government involvement is focus on carpooling. In private sector that is something we can control and influence independently. Public transportation can be demanded and new options added, however we have delegated that to our government and representatives. We would need to uniformly demand more of it over time.

During interim if we find carpools and try that, in theory we could reduce much of the climate, health, traffic, and deprecation concerns.

</comment><comment><USER46> I agree that it's absurd that a lot of Americans have to rely on their cars, but I sympathize with the commenters here who don't have cars in places where they would be really convenient.

It would be good if the author of the article went more in-depth about the causes of car culture and potential policy solutions. The car is a status symbol of independence in American culture, but I don't think the prevalence of that culture can be separated from how our infrastructure is heavily biased towards utilizing public space for parking spaces, roads, etc. I personally dislike driving and would much rather walk or take a train to where I'm going, even if it took a bit longer.

In my city, there is no public transit at all that would allow me to get to where my doctor is, and it would take almost 2 hours for me to bike there across very dangerous roads not designed for bikers. My city also banned ride sharing services for a time, so the only options would have been "bumming" a ride from someone or taking an expensive cab - both car-based modes of transit. Taking public transit to another place I could have biked from more easily would have taken just as long as biking the whole route. Towards the end of the route, I would have had to somehow bike on a highway with cards speeding along at 60+mph, too.

Even in another city designed with bike lanes when I had very obvious flashing lights attached to my bike, I got hit by a driver who wasn't paying attention when he turned right onto the road in front of me. Drivers in my current city are much less aware of bikers than there, and I've seen Uber drivers in another city with a similar lack of public transit yelling and harassing bikers sharing the road quite unobtrusively.

Another factor here is that the elderly get heat strokes during the summer when temperatures exceed 100 degrees. I'm not sure how well walking to their bus stop would work.

There need to be better solutions here than the gas guzzling monstrosities that people drive everyday. I try to reduce my carbon footprint and gas bill by driving an efficient car. The infrastructure for electric cars, which would help the dependence on fossil fuels but not entirely solve deaths from vehicle accidents (though it might prevent _some_ , because of large crumple zones), simply isn't there yet. Until better public transit gets more funding, the increasing availability of affordable electric cars may be a good stopgap solution, at least.

<comment><USER47> Having lived and worked in France, the UK, the USA and Canada (mostly in large cities) I have heard people's excuses for why they do not cycle ad nauseam. All in places where I do cycle. Usually there is a way. Usually people are looking for an excuse not to find it.

That's not to deny that your particular situation is indeed impossible, but the idea that you need bike lanes and your mantra of being in danger strikes me as not reflecting the actual safety, convenience and abve all _enjoyment_.

Cycling has overall better life expectancy outcomes than driving and is pretty safe.

You may want to consider a pedelec/electric-assist bicycle (I recommend recent models using the bottom bracket motors from either Bosch or Shimano) if your trip is too long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> The article shows the problems related to using car, but not why this primacy is "absurd". What is the alternative? (it's only absurd if there is a better alternative).

</comment><comment><USER49> I wonder how Apple will do with their Apple car, once people realize they don't have to own a car. The Apple brand is about possession, and this doesn't go well with using a car as a service.

</comment><comment><USER50> Clearly written by someone in the city.

</comment><comment><USER51> ...apparently written by an apartment dweller who wants to 'nerf' the entire world.

The market or job isn't always 2 blocks or even 2 miles away.

...The Absurdity of an Atlantic Article.</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best metasearch engine? - <AUTHOR> I want a fully customizable metasearch engine.<p>Which should I look at? (CLI might be cool for textual) <comment><USER2> This may or may not be what you're looking for, but you should check out my company's product, Meta Search. Our website is [https://www.meta.sc](https://www.meta.sc) and our product provides a really powerful search experience across a bunch of different cloud platforms as well as local devices. Happy to answer any questions you may have!

</comment><comment><USER3> What kind of metasearch?

For web metasearch, DuckDuckGo has taken the crown from Metacrawler, and is easily the best thing out there.

As for the rest... I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER4> try [http://searx.me/](http://searx.me/) it is open source, also available as a docker instance.

besides web interface it also offers RSS, CSV and JSON api. supports about 10 search engines.

you can query it in curl or write a simple api client with rest-client</comment>


128-bit storage: are you high? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/128_bit_storage_are_you <comment><USER3> The most interesting thing in this article is the reference to "Ultimate physical limits to computation." It's something I never thought about before and honestly it kind of blew my mind a little bit...

<comment><USER4> A proffessor once told me never to believe the physical limits. He mentioned how a wavelength of light was the smallest we could etch silicon. He then mentioned that today (at the time of the class) we were etching with 1/20th the wavelength of light.

He then said that he could not explain how the new 1/20th of of a wavelength drawing works because new physics had been learned, and it had not been in his physics book.

<comment><USER5> Your sentiment is healthy, but you should distinguish between "we don't know of a way to do X" and "X is impossible under the current laws of physics". The former is like etching sub-wavelength silicon. The latter is like moving faster than the speed of light.

> new physics had been learned, and it had not been in his physics book.

Again, there is a difference between learning new techniques and phenomena running on top of known physical law, and learning new fundamental laws. When engineers say "new physics", they refer to the former, but when physicists say "new physics", they refer to the latter. And there hasn't been any new physics, more or less, since the 60's.

The computational limits are thought to be encoded in the fundamental laws, in a way very analogous to the limiting speed c.

<comment><USER6> > "X is impossible under the current laws of physics"

I think the keyword here is "current".

While the development of "new physics" is unlikely, those developments have never failed to surprise us before. We have ever increasing capabilities to both explore and observe the world around us. I find it highly unlikely that we have cracked all there is to physics.

<comment><USER7> btw, even with the "current" laws of physics the energy required to boil earth's oceans is not that big [http://pinktentacle.com/2010/09/animated- simulation-of-aster...](http://pinktentacle.com/2010/09/animated-simulation- of-asteroid-hitting-earth/)

While all this discussion about the actual laws of physics is very important, I would like to underline the fact the the other half of the reasoning about whether 128 bits are enough is centered around the fact that we are of course not able to handle that amount of energy, it sounds so obvious for all of us that this argument is used as a punchline.

While I cannot imagine how it could be done (or why), this is the kind of things doesn't involve changing our knowledge about basic physical laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The 128-bit storage of ZFS reminds me a bit of TeX. As far as I can remember reading the TeX book, Don Knuth also wanted to play it safe. Internally, everything relies on integers (no floating point operations), and the smallest internal unit of measurement is less than the wavelength of light (don't remember the color ;-) ).

<comment><USER9> At least one game programmer is recommending sticking with integers for distances. " 64 bits of precision gets you to the furthest distance of Pluto from the Sun (7.4 billion km) with sub-micrometer precision. "

[http://home.comcast.net/~tom_forsyth/blog.wiki.html#%5B%5BA%...](http://home.comcast.net/~tom_forsyth/blog.wiki.html#%5B%5BA%20matter%20of%20precision%5D%5D)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fun fact: the AS/400 virtual instruction set uses 128-bit pointers (that get truncated when executing on a real machine). It's not excessive considering that the AS/400 is not only a flat-memory architecture, but a single-level store.

I think storage will eventually move to the Venti model of hash addressing. It just makes much more sense on a network and with current archive-everything practices (there are some really big wins to be gained from compression and dedup there). BitTorrent is doing this already.

<comment><USER11> venti rules hard :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One day, aliens will use our oceans as heat sinks for their great galactic computer. And even then, ZFS will serve them well.

<comment><USER6> We can use a ZFS storage system to make the moons of Saturn inhabitable. That's Sealand taken to a whole new level.

The network latencies are terrible, however.

<comment><USER13> Charles Stross wrote a book loosely incorporating this concept (Accelerando, I think).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure that the computation is completely to the point -- he starts out asking "what is the _smallest_ storage unit that could fit this many bytes", and then goes on to consider how much energy it would take to do so. But if we are primarily worried about energy usage, we can write it cheaper (at the cost, I guess, of using more mass for the storage medium).

The usual limit that is mentioned for storage is Laundauer's principle (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle>), which states that we need to use at least ln(2)kT Joules of energy to write one bit, where k is Boltzmann's constant and T is the temperature of the storage system.

Assuming the best case T=Cosmic Background Temperature=2.7K (although this is optimistic since we will also be heated up by the sun and by the Milky way), this give 8.8e15 J to write 2^128 bits, or 3.6e19 J to write 2^128 512-byte blocks.

That's much less than what Bonswick calculates, and less than the energy to boil the ocean!

<comment><USER14> In fact, here's a more down-to-earth idea of a high density storage: use a diamond crystal, with C-12 atoms for 'zero' bits and C-13 atoms for 'one' bits. (I learned about this idea from Charles Stross' blog). While it's not obvious how to read and write this, the concept is clearly not ruled out by the laws of physics.

Then storing 2^64 512-byte disk blocks requires 1.5 grammes of diamond (7.5 carats), while storing 2^128 blocks requires 3e16 kg (a ball of diamond with a radius of 12 km).

2^128 is a big number, but perhaps not big enough to last us through the singularity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It can be useful to have a large address space, even if you don't have enough hardware to actually populate the whole thing.

For example, you might split the address space into smaller sections (executable, read only, read/write, shared, etc) which immediately cuts down the space you have. Or you might decide that your method for allocating space is to pick a random part of the address space, and check if it is taken (or perhaps something slightly cleverer). In this case, you will get better performance if there aren't as many collisions.

<comment><USER16> Or you might have some highly drive-abstracted representation where every addressable thing in every _version_ of a filesystem-like dataset has its own address. No one's asking to do that now (as far as I know), but if we get 128 bits I bet we'll come up with ways to use them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A (2004) at the end would be nice.

      > I've had people tell me every year, for years, that Moore's Law was
      > about to end. I've said the opposite, and have yet to lose the bet.
      > Limits on spot density are fundamentally arguments about 2D storage.
      > Once we move into 3D -- and this work is already underway -- we will
      > get many more orders of magnitude to play with.

This comment was made in 2004. Where are our '3D' storage devices?

<comment> space-monkey [http://www.electroiq.com/index/Semiconductors/sst- blogs/chip...](http://www.electroiq.com/index/Semiconductors/sst- blogs/chipworks-blog-display/blogs/sst- blogs/chipworks/post987_7451506051585892995.html)

I doubt he was thinking flash memory at the time, but 3D storage is already in use. One of the bigger limitations with this is heat, so we have people writing papers like:

[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Thermal+via+placement+in...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Thermal+via+placement+in+3D+ICs&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001&as_sdtp=on)

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure if that really counts as 3D storage though. I'm pretty sure that the commentator was referring to holographic storage, which would theoretically have a higher information density, and actually _use_ the third dimension for data storage.

Unless I'm reading those links wrong, they are just stacking flash memory on top of each other. How is this different than finding a way to pack hard drive platters closer together? You're just taking several 2D storage mechanisms and stacking them on top of each other. You're not using the third dimension for anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice article, great calculation. There's a much simpler argument for 128 bit storage though: the observable universe has at minimum 10^79 atoms in it. Even if you could use each and every one of those atoms as a bit to store data, you'd still have more than 50 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE left in ZFS for the rest of the data. We're probably safe.

<comment><USER19> 10^79 = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

2^128= 340282366920938463463374607431768211456

<comment><USER18> Ahh shit, totally lame brained that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wouldn't a better calculation involve (2^64 + 1) bytes of storage, or even 2^65, instead of going for the upper bound at (2^128)? In other words, what's the _minimum_ energy requirement for 64 bits to be insufficient?

A neat calculation for the wow-factor, but not really very informative.

</comment><comment><USER21> Yes, this is theoretically cool and all, but when I hear something like:

"Let's start with the easy one: how do we know it's necessary? Some customers already have datasets on the order of a petabyte, or 250 bytes. Thus the 64-bit capacity limit of 264 bytes is only 14 doublings away."

It raises a huge red flag from a business point of view. In 2004 "some customers" had datasets that would cause issues sometime around 2015 - <USER2> problem that ZFS purported to solve (among admittedly much more relavant features). In planning for a future that was possibly ten years away for "some customers" instead of focusing on what was relevant to the larger customer base, Sun managed to continue their slow profitability death march until Oracle finally snatched them up this year.

Something to keep in mind when you decide to add "cool theoretical feature X" or "unparalleled scalability" to your four month old startup...

<comment><USER22> ZFS has been one of the biggest selling points for Solaris over the last 5 years. There are a huge number of places that use Solaris _only_ for ZFS support. For example, the SmugMug people have written about it a number of times.

<comment><USER21> ZFS may have been, but not the 128 bit support. I mentioned that there are "admittedly much more relevant features" which are in fact what smugmug likes:

"ZFS is the most amazing filesystem I've ever come across. Integrated volume management. Copy-on-write. Transactional. End-to-end data integrity. On-the- fly corruption detection and repair. Robust checksums. No RAID-5 write hole. Snapshots. Clones (writable snapshots). Dynamic striping. Open source software."

<http://bit.ly/bg2xlf>

I never disputed ZFS being a good file system. I claimed that 128 bit support wasn't a key feature and was in fact a potential waste of time.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any philosophy grads who have turned into hackers? - <AUTHOR> Like the title says. If I'm not mistaken, pg was an undergrad philosophy major. Anyone else find coding after graduating, or maybe while still in school? How was the transition? What things did you get hung up on or find easy?<p>Do you feel like it helps in other functions of startup life, say product management? <comment><USER2> Not a startup here. But my formal qualification is a bachelor of economics, and a bachelor of arts with majors in philosophy/religious studies. I started doing computer science, but changed courses after first year because, frankly, I found it WAY too boring. I was getting pretty good grades too, but couldn't see myself sitting through two more years to do the kind of programming work they were trying to impose upon us (basically preparing us for faceless industry production jobs in my opinion, this was around 2000 or so, don't know if its changed since then) :P

That's not the most common mix, so i've probably just de-anonymised myself :P

At the time of writing this I'm employed by the government to write algorithms, do analytics and produce numbers. I guess I'm pretty much a data scientist. I wrote this: [https://communities.sas.com/docs/DOC-2462](https://communities.sas.com/docs/DOC-2462) in my spare time, and now i'm working on a similar/analytics project written in Common Lisp.

I can't really speak for the philosophy degree itself, but I definitely prefer working with other people who are philosophically inclined. People with a wide array of interests and questioning, skeptical minds. I've found you'll hear a lot of things from the tech community which are taken on face value, which could be said for most areas of life. Personally, there's a whole bunch of marketing material and propaganda out there in machine learning, stats, big- data and AI circles at the moment on what things actually do or can actually do, and I feel having already been involved with some of the philosophy of such fields helps me separate the wheat from the chaff because I've already considered the nature of knowledge, what we can know, and what we can find out.

But on the other hand it can be somewhat frustrating, because there's another personality type that appears a lot in compsci/numbers/engineering who most certainly does not want to deal with theory/ambiguity, and indeed they were attracted to the field in part because they thought they wouldn't have to deal with such ambiguities.

That and I find myself analyzing/taking apart whatever system I'm in, and i quickly become uncomfortable with it, which means moving around jobs/projects alot. But that might just be a general intelligence/hacker thing, and not specifically a philosophy thing.

Well, that was rambly...

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh man, this resonates. I think in any organization you need a certain balance of those two personalities - but the philosophy degree sure makes the questioning/skeptical folks more my type. And until I started my own company, I moved around a lot too. But now that I'm leading things that sort of incisive thinking is a boon (sometimes).

When you say you get uncomfortable with a system, though, d'you mean ethically? Or just bored?

<comment><USER2> Honestly, in my own experience, which I'm loathe to use as advice for anyone else, I've had experiences that fall into both.

Bored-wise i'll enter a job, get acquainted with a practice, and almost immediately see failings/things to improve/things I can automate. Then I will. It'll be great, and then I'll have sorted the problems that exist within the context of my little environment over which I have control, and everything will be going 2-3 times better, but then i become bored again... In the best case scenarios, if there's not scope for any new challenges/problems in the job/company, I tend to move on amicably at that point.

However, there's been a few points where I've clashed "ethically". And this probably does have to do with philosophy, because its quite clear I've thought quite deeply about how I think I should live my life, and the minimum values I expect those around me to hold, and other's can be quite surprised/offended/awkward when you don't just go along with it all. I won't work with certain employers/jobs/industries (probably not what people are thinking, I'm not religious). So far this hasn't hindered me in terms of putting food on the table and living a comfortable life, but i accept it could one day, and I don't know what i'll do if I ever were to fall upon particularly hard times. But I try to live simply compared to most anyway :P Generally I try to do the right thing, then I'll leave if i can't. Its only really happened once so far, and the jobs I find obviously objectionable i've never applied for/accepted in the first place. I've taken some risks here and there which other people probably wouldn't have in that regard...

Now, being a general philosophical person, I do wonder about the ethics of what I do, and god, looking back i've probably got some reflections and thoughts about that one...but I can sleep comfortably at night and don't really have any regrets yet :) I'm trying to work towards going it alone (or at least in charge) myself eventually....

<comment><AUTHOR> That's interesting. Maybe it's 'cause I've just watched the first episode of Silicon Valley but, for most people, even if you're not doing something obviously good for the world, there's huge internal pressure to feel as if you're making a big contribution to some big picture things that matter.

That, I think, is why you get lots of "xyz startup is changing the world!" rhetoric. Because whether or not it is true, people worry about the optics of what they do, and need something meaningful to point to. To actually care about ethics involves making painful choices of the sort that it sounds like you've done. Say, choices that keep you from dying on the inside, but which are still painful. So kudos to you.

<comment><USER2> See, not trying to bignote myself, but I've kinda gone through a "saving the world" phase. Not like the Silicon valley people. As in I took a job working with the unemployed, then I moved jobs to work for a group that works with and advocates for the homeless. Both have left me incredibly jaded. I thought I could go in with my gifts and do something for people. I couldn't, not really, and discovered charities and the like are full of self-interested/damaged people and politics much like anywhere else.

I know exactly what you're talking about with the startup culture: "Saving the world with an advertising/smart-phone-app/messaging service". Every time Zuckerberg opens his mouth I wonder whether he believes or has thought about what he's saying, whether he's just saying it to use investor money to achieve his own ends, or whether he's just saying it to try to placate the public/silicon valley/himself. Which, look, I guess you just have to laugh at it. But i also guess that not buying into the workplace culture makes such places awkward to work at.

I'm currently facing new moral dilemmas. Looking to move on again, but I'm seriously considering some of the grey areas I'd written off before (say working for big banks), primarily for the money. I reason if they can use me in a fraud analysis or something, maybe I could live with myself. Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to think about such things :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not philosophy major but I think my story might be helpful. So I started my college (in China) as a Business Administration major, then transferred to UM during Junior year studying Econ. It wasn't until my senior year in college that I felt in love with code and dived into CS.

Frankly, the business and econ education is not helpful at all for a programmer. But I guess the hassle I went through did help me become a good product maker. I mean when you write code for code, you're just writing code; but when you code with a business perspective, you're making a real, legit product that actually means something.

To answer your question: the transition was quite difficult. Think installing Mac OS on a PC. Things I got hung up: gosh so many things. Think installing Mac OS on a PC... Things I find easy: gosh so many things. Think having a Mac OS on a PC... Does it help: Yes it helps. I'm always the best programmer in the business teams, and the best business guy in the technical teams. Knowing something about everything makes you flexible and capable.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have an undergraduate degree in sociology with a concentration in social theory and a masters in social work with a concentration in research methodologies. Lots of philosophy in the undergrad degree, and some in the second. After a decade in the non-profit industry, as a researcher and as a social worker, I went to a ruby/rails bootcamp and am now employed as a full stack developer. (I already had a significant amount of HTML/CSS experience and ran my own company putting together simple-ish Wordpress and Drupal sites for non-profits for a few years)

I'm not sure if I can pick particular things out and be like, oh understanding Foucault is particularly good for this aspect of startup life, but in general I find myself to have a more solid value system than many people i know in the tech industry, able to figure things out quicker and on my own, and generally find my knowledge much more well-rounded.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a BA with a double major in philosophy and history. Turns out that nobody will pay you to do either of those, so I am a programmer. I had started programming many years earlier, as a child, so there wasn't really any transition.

I have never run into any problems related to not having a CS degree. The tech industry is, in general, the most purely meritocritous social and business system I've seen. If you can demonstrate an ability to write quality working code, nothing else matters, they'll hire you. (The very few tech industry people who care about you having a CS degree as such are not often people you'd want to work for anyway.)

Having a phil degree helps in better understanding other people's worldviews, which is indirectly useful in many areas of startup life.

</comment><comment><USER6> A friend of mine has majored in philosophy at University of Warsaw, Poland, and now works at Google in Mountain View. His wife, also a philosophy grad, has co-founded a startup headquartered in CA, Wellfitting.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, not the best link to open in a busy café :) But kudos to them! I'd love to know what the philosophy -> google progression was like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yep, I have a BA in Philosophy, have been employed as a Software Engineer, and am now the CTO of a SaaS startup.

I got into web stuff before going to college, but decided that a CS major wasn't really for me even though I wanted to make software for a living. Philosophy was my favorite subject so I decided to major in it. I don't regret that decision at all. I think my coursework has been very valuable to my career (even if not all employers would necessarily agree) in terms of my analytical thinking and problem-solving skills.

</comment><comment><USER8> I studied philosophy, and I also tacked on a CS degree. In retrospect, the CS degree wasn't necessary - all the programming I needed to know for a job I was able to pick up on the side and by going to hackathons. I really treasure my philosophy degree - it taught me how to think holistically and it trained me to find weak spots, poke holes, and strengthen, all of which come in handy in engineering and in broader thinking about the state of the world.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes. Well, programmer.

I found it well after graduation from college, when I needed to get data from point a to point b without re-keying. Eventually, I went back to school and got a master's in computer science.

I would say that the ability to think abstractly, and the experience of having to express yourself clearly, help.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a BA in philosphy and am employed as a programmer. It's been pretty good to me. Skepticism, logic, and good communication are important for any job. I went back and got an MS is CS because I wanted the technical background in a more formal way.

</comment><comment><USER11> The CTO of Forum One (DC agency) has a BA in philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Philosophy is the basis of happy hacking, I think.</comment>


Show HN: Find Something New to Do - <AUTHOR> https://iwilldothis.today <comment><AUTHOR> This is a simple web page for people to find and share ideas of what to do right now during this weird social distancing period.</comment>